Curse

vapor311 · Mar 14, 2007, 05:09 PM // 17:09

Seeing as how AoG has been thoroughly clubbed by the nerf bat virtually not to be seen again, and how it's always fun to look for something to put on an Assassin other than Shadow Prison, I was thinking that Dark Apostasy might be a good alternative to provide pressure against enchantment heavy teams in the way that AoG provided.

Assuming a Critical Strikes attribute of 14, and a Dagger Master attribute of at least 13, along with Critical eye activated, an enchantment will be removed ~47% of the time with just auto attacks. Wild Blow, Malicious strike, and Critical Strike could be added to guarentee prime enchantment removal. With 14 in Critical Strikes, and Critical Eye active the energy loss from the removal will equal what you get with each critical.

It's not without its downsides of course. It is enchantment based so it can be removed, but it's really has no downtime except for recasting it every ~20 seconds or so. As opposed to the form which if it gets interrupted is worthless for 2 minutes while it recharges. What do you think?

Apple · Mar 14, 2007, 05:27 PM // 17:27

Rending Sweep > all

Patccmoi · Mar 14, 2007, 06:16 PM // 18:16

Dark Apostacy is a good skill overall but is really really gimped by the fact that it's 2s cast time.

I ran it before in GvG and when it was up it was party-time, but usually after 2-3 min the other team would catch up what was going and i COULDN'T activate it in the fight anymore. I'd either have a Mesmer or Ranger interrupting or a Warrior knockdowning or DA Shattered the instant it went up.

The fact that it's an enchant is fine, it pretty much balances the skill, but as long as it's 2s activation i can't really consider it for any serious GvG play. HA it might be worth it since games are much shorter usually in deathmatches so the other team has less time to adapt and in 3 ways they can't just keep their eyes on you.

If DA was 1s activation, i'd really like to use it again. And i'd actually very likely use it on an A/W using warrior skills and a Shield so that you can stick in their face more safely and it's less energy consuming. Something like 13 Critical Strike, 12 Axe, 9 Tactics with DA, Critical Eye, Wild Blow, Dismember, Malicious Strike, Frenzy, Dash, etc... Can likely do something decent with it. There might be something interesting to do with a Spear too, going 9 Command.

Think of like:

A/P
13 Critical Strike
12 Spear Mastery
9 Command

Dark Apostacy
Critical Eye
Go for the Eyes! (actually raises your chance to crit to about 100%)
Vicious Attack
Spear of Lightning/Harrier's Toss
Swift Javelin/Unblockable Throw/Wild Throw
Critical Defenses / Dash
Rez Signet / Sig of Return

Could be interesting with Critical Defenses always refreshing through GftE! to cover your DA all the time. Being ranged, 75% block enchant, 86AL vs Elemental and 96AL vs Physical (or use while enchanted for 96AL against everything which is VERY good armor), you wouldn't actually be easy to take down and you could likely strip a lot of enchants and do appreciable damage. Maybe the 2s cast wouldn't matter as much with a setup like this since you're range so it's easier to fall back out of range and come back in the fight. The only sad thing is having no IAS.

neoflame · Mar 14, 2007, 07:25 PM // 19:25

Assault Enchantments.

Patccmoi · Mar 14, 2007, 08:13 PM // 20:13

Assault Enchantment is very good enchant removal, but it also forces the sin into an Enchant Removal role. I mean, the sin has to use daggers to damage since you need a dual attack mark, but can't use more or less any other attack skill without removing the mark, so basically you take out the sin for damage after his dual just to spam Assault Enchantment.

It's not bad for some sort of train (personally i think that it's especially good with caster spikes or something like that to remove Prot Spirit and Spirit Bond over and over while they nuke down the target) BUT you must consider that one of your guys will hardly do anything else than remove enchants while the rest kills. Take a place like TA, you just don't have enough players to make it worth it.

Dark Apostasy on the other hand allows the sin to keep dealing his damage at the same time. It's not as crazy enchant removal, but you rarely need something as powerful as Assault Enchantment to get your kill except if it's like killing a Ghostly Hero in HA.

Nortos · Mar 15, 2007, 06:42 AM // 06:42

Shattering Assault although energy upkeep may be hard if can fit it a build it's nice enchant removal, recently used unsuspecting strike, wild strike, shattering assault, 2 enchant removals every 4 secs as all dagger skills were 4 recharge. With the build you would be swapping targets a lot and doing mini spikes.

djbartek · Mar 15, 2007, 01:20 PM // 13:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nortos

Shattering Assault although energy upkeep may be hard if can fit it a build it's nice enchant removal, recently used unsuspecting strike, wild strike, shattering assault, 2 enchant removals every 4 secs as all dagger skills were 4 recharge. With the build you would be swapping targets a lot and doing mini spikes.

Shattering Assault is currently so much bugged that I wouldn't even consider this skill. It's a pity though, if it did intended +dmg, I would be really keen to tinker with it, because overally it's very interesting Elite.

Bugeater · Mar 15, 2007, 01:41 PM // 13:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patccmoi

Assault Enchantment is very good enchant removal, but it also forces the sin into an Enchant Removal role. I mean, the sin has to use daggers to damage since you need a dual attack mark, but can't use more or less any other attack skill without removing the mark, so basically you take out the sin for damage after his dual just to spam Assault Enchantment.

We had pretty good success with Black Lotus, Black Spider, Golden Phoenix, Death Blossom, Assult Enchantments. While the damage isn't to Moebus level (which is really the gold standard for Assassin damage), Removing enchantment stacks on a 4 or 5 second timer is definately a solid trade-off.

masteroflife · Mar 15, 2007, 01:49 PM // 13:49

sup dortain, now back to the topic.

OoA is better, because it offers more enchant removal at a faster rate. it also does not have any down time unless the orders is under heavy pressure. This leaves your assassin to do a full damage combo without having to worry about aegis or other enchantments(dual attack removes 2

) OoA can be used strategically against aegis and other enchantments. unlike IWAY, which OoA spammer's job is to keep it up at all times, in a more balanced version of a build, OoA can be used at the right time to strip aegis or prot spirit right before a spike.
on top of that, melee doesn't even have to strip the enchantment. how sweet is a ele using a spear removing enchantments

rii · Mar 15, 2007, 08:51 PM // 20:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by djbartek

Shattering Assault is currently so much bugged that I wouldn't even consider this skill. It's a pity though, if it did intended +dmg, I would be really keen to tinker with it, because overally it's very interesting Elite.

It doesn't seem massively bugged. We've been running shattering assault/impale for a while and had no problems when training on 60AL targets.

Unless something has changed since I tested the build (a month-ish ago), I'm assuming the problem you're refering to is the +damage apparantly registering before armour (or something similar), making the damage awful against high AL targets (like knights - 22 damage per strike -,-).

However, there frankly aren't many times when a sin hitting a high AL target is good when the sin removes enchantments. Against HB monks and attunement eles the sin can hit for up to 130-150 net, which isn't bad, as well as providing useful e-removal.

I can't compare it to other options like apostasy, since I haven't used them, but shattering assault is AFAIK decent.

Symbol · Mar 15, 2007, 09:10 PM // 21:10

Shattering assault is completely bugged. You only get two different damage values, one for crits and one for non-crits, and none of the damage is armor ignoring so it scales horribly against higher AL (and occasionally you DO want to hit warriors and paragons).

For example with 16 DM shattering assault does 70 damage per hit on a 60 AL target on a non crit, and 99 damage on a crit. Those numbers aren't bad, but honestly I'd prefer the skill with a straight +53 damage rather than whatever the hell it's doing now.

rii · Mar 15, 2007, 09:38 PM // 21:38

Well, that's screwed.

K, if they fix it... shatter assault is a decent option =.-

Patccmoi · Mar 15, 2007, 09:46 PM // 21:46

I agree that WHEN it's fixed it will be a solid option. Right now it's -ok-, but not that good all in all because of the bug. If the bug is fixed, it will actually become a good elite.

I've been playing massively with the A/P build i posted above in the last few days, starting to REALLY like it. Its able to do very good pressure damage on its own and remove tons of enchants. By far my favorite DA build up to now, the 2s cast time matters MUCH less when using spears.

Wichtel · Mar 15, 2007, 10:44 PM // 22:44

Do you now what happens if you use it with Flurry?

vapor311 · Mar 16, 2007, 04:04 AM // 04:04

Yes. I'm guessing you attack faster but do less damage. One of the benefits of DA as opposed to Shattering Assault or Assault Enchantments is that it does not require an attack combo to be effective. You can be removing enchantments with just auto attacks as opposed to chaining together a combo which can prove to be problematic. Adding skills like GPS/Critical Strike/Impale still allows you to remove multiple enchants and still be able to put out some significant damage in one combo.

OoA is really a topic of another discussion. Mostly what I was looking for here were opinions on whether a DA Assassin can fulfill a similar role to what a Grenths Dervish used to prenerf or how it compared postnerf.